Clean
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: Roland refuses to get out of the bathtub. Enchanted Forest, missing year.


**A/N:** based on the prompt "Roland refuses to get out of the bathtub."

* * *

><p><em>Clean<em>

* * *

><p>Even in its recent state of disuse, the castle is not wanting for much. The pantries are stockpiled with enough food to feed fifty for five winters straight—colossal bread pyramids, spreads of dried meats and fruit, a variety of cheeses, wines and mulled ciders crammed in from cellar to ceiling. The linens are bountiful, and the number of beds with which to adorn them enough to accommodate ten times the size of their party.<p>

Still, most of the four-poster canopies with their elaborate, hand-carved mahogany frames go unused, too soft and supple for backs accustomed to sleeping on solid ground. Something Regina had discovered the hard way one evening, when she'd tripped over someone's ankle and nearly broken her own; the man who smelled like forest had elected to doze off on the floor of the armory, directly in the path that her sleepless nighttime wanderings had taken her.

(She usually spends these walks in solitude, thinking of Henry, always thinking of Henry; that night, she'd thought instead of all the thousand and three ways to live up to the evil in her name and make the man's life a living hell, as she'd hobbled back to her bedchambers. Never minding how immensely apologetic he'd been, the sorry excuse he'd given for having gotten back late from washing up and not wishing to wake his son. Regina hoped the boy at least had the good sense of sleeping in his bed, rather than at the foot of it.)

For every room warmed by a well-lit fire, there are also twice as many bathtubs in the castle to go around for all its new inhabitants—the likes of whom would never have made it one boot-clad foot past the door back when it was heavily guarded to keep them out, thieves and commoners alike. And now they are both here in droves, going about as they damn well please and sleeping wherever they like, because for all intents and purposes (as Snow feels the need to remind Regina on a regular basis), these forest people are their guests. Guests who are unfamiliar with the concept of good manners and propriety, the luxuries of scented soaps and heated water.

Which is why most of them, much to Regina's dismay, have taken to bathing in the streams that span from stable to meadow. Their objectionable acts of exhibitionism have more or less prohibited her midnight horseback rides, sentencing her instead to the dull contemplation of every cracked stone and worn brick as she re-circles and doubles back down endless castle hallways. As she happens by the windows, if she's unlucky enough, she'll catch sight of them diving shamelessly and enthusiastically into the water, their indecency offensive to the eyes, this nudist colony of Merry Men.

With the exception of, it seems, one. The smallest of them, too young yet to tread water unattended, the presence of whom she finds least distressing and, in fact, rather comforting at times, if truth be told (though she'll tell it to no one).

Regina keeps to herself most days, retreating to the welcome isolation of her bedchambers unless a quick meal or powwow with the Charmings calls her away from it. And because most people seem to take the hint, she gets little more than a wary eye or an averted gaze as she stalks brusquely to the buffet table and back.

But it hasn't escaped her attention, how the boy—both of them, really—watches her from afar when she's there to be seen, watches her with curiosity in place of consternation. The man, that insolent thief responsible for her recent limp, will balance him at the hip, look her way while she's pretending to look another, and then speak into his son's ear with a gentle, teasing smile. He'll suggest something that has the boy's dark brown curls flying, head diving bashfully into his papa's shoulder. And then he—Roland is his name, she recalls—will peer at her from between tiny fingers when he's absolutely sure she hasn't noticed.

She does, every time.

And it makes sense, really, because he's a child; doesn't look more than four, five at most, and what do children know about heroes and villains? (Henry had known plenty, she reminds herself. But at Roland's age, the looks he'd give her were filled with love rather than a shortage of trust—something he'd grow into later that would break her heart, make her fight to earn it back.) Children haven't been burned enough times to know which things are safe to touch and which will hurt them if they do. To Roland, she's the fancy woman with the sad eyes and the magic hands, hands that turned a scary monster into the stuffed monkey he now tugs along with him everywhere he goes. She suspects that any shady stranger on the side of the road could offer him sweets in exchange for the attention he's giving her now.

But it doesn't explain his father, and the way _he_ looks at her, because he should know better; yet he does anyway, looks at her as though he knows there's more to her than the words she flings at him like poisonous darts, or the fireballs she's actually thrown at him on more than one occasion. As though evil is her smokescreen, not a second skin, which she drapes as a cloak over the heart on her sleeve (much like the tattoo she'll soon find he wears under his). But how could he possibly know that? Is she that transparent? No one else seems to have perceived as much about her (not anyone with the added benefit of having known her as long as Snow has, anyway).

Then again, nobody else looks at her quite the way he does.

For God's sake, though, she'd rewarded him for breaking into her own castle. So that she could curse herself with eternal sleep. Shouldn't that have been enough to convince him that he shouldn't trust her any farther than he can shoot one of those gold-tipped arrows? That her priorities aren't terribly aligned with his own? (Although nothing is worse than the loss of a child, and she's fairly certain that's one thing they'll always be able to see eye to eye on.)

It's these thoughts of the thief and his son that have her too preoccupied to notice when a second shadow about a third the size of hers slips into her bedchambers as she's drawing herself a bath. She sheds her heavy outer things and unwinds her hair from its braided weave around the crown of her head (it's grown tiresome, doing it differently every day, and she wonders if maybe tomorrow she'll just wear it down, simple, one quick brush-through and then done), slippers pattering her across the cold stone floor. A twilight breeze is traveling in from the north through her open balcony, and she'd prefer not to freeze in it when she's out of her bath, so she heads to the fireplace next, is lazily tossing miniature balls of fire that spit and crackle to life in the hearth, when she hears it.

A splash, followed by a shrill, high-pitched scream.

Heart in her throat, Regina whips around so hard her world is spinning, eyes frantic as they search for the source of the sound.

And that's when she sees him, unruly mop of hair bobbing up and down in the water, tiny grip on the marble ledge of the bathtub bringing him to a stand. Mischievous eyes rise up into view, followed by a pert little nose, and then a wide, wide grin.

"Roland?" she gasps, hand still clutched to her chest.

"My Majesty!" he crows, looking pleased as punch as his arms windmill around, sending spectacular flourishes of water all over the floor as he sneaks back out of sight. She slips and slides her way to him, not quite panicked but getting there. He seems awfully comfortable, but she'd let the water simmer and steam up the room before stepping away, and if he's burnt himself under her (accidental) watch, she'll never forgive herself.

And she has a feeling a certain thief won't either.

Knees knock into the basin bottom and then shoulders sag in relief as her hands dip into the tub and encounter water just a few degrees above tepid. A touch on the cold side for her tastes, actually, but given the present circumstances, it will do just fine. Roland doesn't seem to mind at all—quite the opposite, really, despite the fact that he's still fully dressed, from hooded green cape down to the toes of his boots. Leather ones, that his mother had probably sewn together by hand, now waterlogged and probably ruined beyond hope of repair.

"Roland," Regina addresses him sternly, calmer now that she knows he's in no immediate danger. Still, "Your father will be furious." _With both of us, no doubt_. "Let's get you out of the tub."

"No," says Roland.

Her eyebrow shoots to the ceiling. "No?"

"No," says Roland again, then he's grinning, with dimples, and she's the one in trouble now. "I like it here! Feels nice."

It occurs to her that he's probably never had a proper bath in his life.

"Can I stay?" he wheedles. "Please?"

Those dimples are going to have the world wrapped around his finger someday, she thinks ruefully as she surveys the situation. On one hand, her father may never trust his son anywhere near her again. (Although a small part of her protests that that hardly seems fair. She'll see to it that he walks away from this unharmed, and it's not like she's intentionally lured him here. Small children are hardly her snack of choice—she's not _that_ kind of evil—and besides, her castle is a far cry from a gingerbread house made of frosting and gumdrops.)

But on the other hand, Roland is absolutely filthy. Debris caked under his nails, a smudge of dirt on his nose, an unidentifiably sticky substance matted into his hair.

She never would've let Henry run amuck like that and get away with it.

"If you're going to stay in there," she tells him finally, coming to a decision she hopes she won't regret too much, "you'll have to earn it. Do you know how you're going to do that?"

"Ummmm," he frowns in adorable deliberation, then guesses, "be clean?" He says it with a scrunch of his nose, as if to indicate that while the prospect of being clean doesn't sound entirely pleasant, he's willing to give it a try.

"That's exactly right," Regina says in her firmest parenting tone. "Can you help me do that?"

He's nodding vigorously as she removes his clothing piece by piece, until one brass leg and claw of the tub disappear behind a pile of muddy calico and lambswool. His boots are the last to go; those she sets carefully aside away from the small swamp beginning to collect around her knees (she thinks briefly about taking them over to the fireplace, but she doesn't want to leave him alone in the room again now that she knows he's here).

"Want to see bubbles?" she beams, tries to ignore the tug at her heartstring as she does. Henry had always been especially crazy for bubbles.

"What's bubbles?" Roland asks her curiously, and she proceeds to show him. Lathers up a generous headful of the stuff, massaging them into his scalp until he's giggling and squirming away from all the "tickles" she's giving him. He doesn't seem to mind the back and belly so much, preoccupying himself with the bar of lemongrass soap she's transfigured into a rubber ducky (though he's perplexed that he's never seen one quite that yellow in real life before); but when she scrubs her way to his underarms he dissolves into hysteria again, ducky abandoned to swim its own laps around the tub.

And when he's not laughing, he's talking, says more in ten minutes than she's heard out of him in as many weeks—wants to know how she gets the water hot when the fire's so far away (she shows him with a wink and a wave of her hand), what all the different smells he's smelling are (rosemary and lavender, citrus and spice; but his favorite is the apple cinnamon by far, because it reminds him the most of "My Majesty"—_it's Regina_, she corrects him with a smile and a confidential whisper, _call me Regina_, and it'll be their little secret).

By the time he's been rinsed of every last soap sud, the sleeves of her chemise are drenched to the elbows and Roland has raisins for hands, but he's clean, so clean he practically sparkles. He's asking why his skin has never been soft like this before, marveling and prodding at it while she's toweling his hair dry, when suddenly he goes stiff as a board. She pauses her ministrations with a small frown, thinks maybe she's rubbed his head too vigorously, until she notices the look on his face, fixated at some point above her shoulder. It's one she's all too familiar with, because Henry's eyes used to go all big and guilty like that whenever she'd catch him with a crayon to the wall, or a piece of sweet to his mouth after bedtime.

And it's a look she wears to match, back squaring and jaw setting (eyes squeezing shut for a second, but only a second), as she mentally prepares herself to turn and face the music.

Or, rather, the wrath of the boy's father.

"Roland?" she hears him breathe behind her, aghast.

"Uh oh," says Roland, sounding very, very small.

Regina attempts to stand, confront the man with some modicum of dignity, but it's no use; she's acutely aware of how ridiculous she must appear to him, only made more so when she spins around to find his baffled gaze raking over her, taking in the disheveled state of her hair. The indecent exposure of her corset that layers of rich velvet on leather normally hide. The puddle of sludge drowning her feet and staining her petticoats up to the knees. Not how he's accustomed to seeing her, by any means. More ragged than regal, more like a maid than a queen. Caught off guard instead of carefully calm and cold. Stripped of her scorn and all soft underneath. All for the boy who reminds her of her own.

(And, someday, for the man before her now, who will teach her that love is not a burden on her heart, but a blessing to her soul.)

She stammers out an apology as he just stares and stares, can only guess the thoughts behind those bewildered blue eyes—thoughts that had worried him sick about the whereabouts of his child, and then only further still to find him in the clutches of the Evil Queen. The way he's looking at her now, like she's something he doesn't recognize, is everything she'd feared, but worse, because now that it's happening, Regina realizes just how much it had meant to her. For him to see her like he _knew _her instead of feared her, to see her in a way nobody else ever did or would.

She feels her skin heat under his scrutiny, attributes it to the angry mortification that's spreading like wildfire from collarbone to cheeks.

(But later, much later, he will allow no room for her to misunderstand; will set her aflame and leave her smoldering with more than just the caress of his gaze, because what she mistakes for repulsion now is a look that's utterly riveted by her instead, a look he's no longer bothering to hide.)

"I'm sorry," Regina says again, because he doesn't seem to have heard her, is still busy gaping at his son, at her, then back at his son, trying to process what must be a very odd and alarming sight, "he just—appeared there, and he refused to get out, and so I thought, well, while he's in the tub, he might as well get a bath, and—"

He finds his voice at last, gentle but scolding, though it's Roland who receives the brunt of it, not her. "Are you listening to what she's saying? You have the Queen uttering apologies and excuses for you when you should be the one telling her how very sorry you are."

Regina loses her words for a moment. That…was the last thing she'd ever expected him to say.

The boy's bottom lip is downturned in a pitiful pout. "I'm very sorry, Regina," he says, eyes drooping balefully to address the water, as his father's widen to the size of dinner plates.

"My boy," he says, a touch sharper this time, "what have we discussed about the proper way to speak to the Queen?"

"It's fine," Regina's interrupting hastily then, unable to bear another second of him reprimanding Roland for things she's to blame for, "I told him to call me that."

"Yeah," says Roland reproachfully, though he tempers his tone a little when it earns a disapproving look from his father, "Regina said only I can."

Blue eyes turn back to her, something like amusement flickering in them, as his chin dips and tilts in a brief nod and bow. "Your Majesty"—and the sudden formality she had repeatedly demanded of him before bothers her now that he's finally obliged, for reasons she's not sure she wants to understand—"since all manners seem to have abandoned my son for the moment, I'm afraid I must be the one to apologize on his behalf." He gives her a rueful half-grin. "When I discovered he'd managed to get away from me for a bit, I—I had a feeling he might come here."

"I'm glad he did," Regina finds herself saying as she watches Roland make a subtle grab for the rubber yellow ducky bobbling past him, pleased that his stuffed monkey will soon make a new friend (and when Roland peeks shyly back up at her through a dense forest of eyelashes, she thinks that perhaps she has too).

"In retrospect," his father is continuing, and she feels his eyes on her still, while hers never stray from Roland, "I owe you my own apology as well. It was out of line for me to barge in looking for him."

"No, it wasn't," she disagrees quietly. "If I had lost my son, I would have done the same."

She hadn't really thought the words through before she said them, and they linger in the air, intensify the silence that follows. It's true, she would've moved hell on earth to be with Henry again, but it isn't just a world that separates them now; it's another reality altogether, and there's no magic spell or true love's kiss that can bring back what she's already lost.

Something that Roland's father knows all too well, yet he doesn't patronize or pity, doesn't offer platitudes or empty phrases of comfort; only silence, heavy with understanding, like a dense blanket in the dead of winter that warms but does not suffocate, and she is more grateful to him for it than she thinks she'll ever be able to admit.

"C-c-c-cold," Roland chatters then, and she welcomes the distraction, her motherly instincts taking over once more. Berating herself for having left him there to chill over and prune up, she throws the towel over his tiny shoulders, seizes him up into her arms. He's shivering and sopping wet and soaking through her undergarments as she about-faces, carries him beyond the set of dividers partitioning bath from bedroom—politely declining his father's proffered arm as she does ("It's fine," she insists, "I have him")—and deposits him under the covers of a generous king-sized mattress that's fit for a queen.

Roland makes a happy, cozy-sounding noise as Regina tucks in the edges till they're snug around his chin. Fireballs the size of citrusy gobstoppers flicker to life in her palms and she blows them like kisses to ignite the candles on her nightstand. They throw a gentle light, warming up whatever isn't already swathed in blankets and sandwiched between pillows. Expert fingers loosen his damp curls, brush them off his face, and he wriggles deeper into the bed like a content little puppy.

"Better?" Regina asks, gets an enthusiastic nod and a blinding flash of dimples in response.

"My boy is quite taken with you," his father comments with a low, gravelly chuckle from where she turns to find him leaning against a bedpost.

"Well," she says, her response prim but not quite as stiff as he's probably used to, "the feeling is mutual."

He's staring again. Well—still staring. She's pretty sure he hasn't stopped since his eyes first stumbled on the sight of her, not as the Evil Queen with a soft spot for children, but as a woman, with the touch of a mother.

"Forgive me," he clears his throat, as he notices her noticing him, "My son and I both have taken more liberties than we deserve tonight. It occurred me that had Roland not been here as I thought he might be, I would've interrupted you at a…most inopportune time."

It's a jarring thought that has her words stalling and imagination running wild for a moment, hands gripping self-consciously at the corners of her corset. The only time she'd exposed this much of herself willingly to a man had been with Graham, in her sheets and between her legs. The heat then had come from direct skin on skin; the pleasure from scratching a quick itch; and the satisfaction from doing it all on her own terms.

But this—with his blue eyes alone leaving scorch marks from ear to ankle, and his son dozing off mere feet away—feels far more intimate somehow, out of her control and leaving her all the more vulnerable for it.

"Roland is excused for his behavior, at least," she says at last.

"Thank the gods for that," he declares with a show of relief, "because he, at least, is genuinely repentant." When she flings a look of surprise his way, he smiles, all rascally and crooked, as he explains, "If you've rejected my apology, then I have no qualms in confessing to you that I gave it only out of obligation. I'm rather grateful, actually, that I had the chance to witness you this way. We—I—" and he looks almost shy now, "I've never seen this side of you before."

Her cheeks burn, though not unpleasantly. "The side of me that's not destroying half the villages and cursing all the rest?" But there's no wrath to her words, only a touch of bitterness and melancholy. "Are you surprised to find any other side of me exists?"

"Oh, I always knew," he tells her mildly, and then his tone takes a turn for the husky as he goes on, "It's just another thing entirely to have the privilege of seeing it. It's…quite arresting, Your Majesty."

An incredulous snort dies in her throat. That way he keeps looking at her is making it hard for her to so much as breathe. "I prefer Regina," she relents finally, and when he bites his lip to keep from grinning outright, she can't decide whether to swoon or scowl.

"Does this mean you'll stop calling me 'thief'?" he asks, teasing.

"I'll have to think about it," she sniffs, turns with exaggerated abruptness, and his answering laugh dwindles away as they both realize that Roland is out cold, all soft snores and dreamy mumbles as he burrows himself further into the comforters and deeper into sleep.

His father heaves a reluctant sigh. "I'll have to wake him," he says, padding quietly forward, when Regina halts his progress with an arm out over the belt slung across his waist.

"Don't," she whispers, head tilting sideways, eyes lifting off her shoulder to meet his questioning gaze as he hovers half a step behind her. Her back presses to his chest as she murmurs, "Let him sleep."

He frowns, begins to protest, when she cuts him off, continues, "You can stay with him."

"No," he argues flatly, "I would never be one to deny you the comfort of your own bed. You sleep beside him. I'll take the floor."

"That's ridiculous," she hisses under her breath. "You'll freeze." Even with the hearth and the candlelight, there's a reason why she never traverses her room barefoot unless she can help it (unless her bath time has been postponed indefinitely by unexpected visitors, as it has now). The reason being that the floors are paved with cemented blocks of stone, impervious to heat and, regrettably, uncarpeted, unlike the armory where this incorrigible man had much to her inconvenience chosen to sleep in the past.

"I've suffered far worse," he shrugs, eyes with a twinkle of mischief amidst the blue that suggests no small degree of said suffering had been on account of her black knights.

"Well, not here, you won't," Regina mutters peevishly. The irony doesn't escape her (her entire existence seems steeped in it now), but his stubbornness will be no match for hers when it comes to separating father from son.

"And if I do?"

God, this man. He will be the end of her, and she'll gladly return the favor. "Then I'm sleeping on the floor with you!"

Unfortunately, it doesn't come out as so much of a threat than a proposition, but the prospect of her spending her night in discomfort in order to prove a point seems to gall him. He looks like he's struggling not to raise his voice and elevate this pointless spat into an equally pointless war, when Roland stirs. Not enough to wake, but certainly enough to have the two adults in the room feeling properly chastised and exchanging extreme looks of guilt.

"Robin," Regina sighs in defeat, and he's staring at her all over again for a good long while before she realizes she's just addressed him by name—not _thief_, not _the boy's father_—just, simply, Robin.

But it's too much for her right now, to think too hard on things she's not quite ready to understand. Not when she's been denied both her bath and at least several hours of restless sleep, before the sun rises on another morning devoid of both hope and Henry. So instead of thinking, instead of fighting, she gives in. "There's no reason for either of us to sleep on the floor, when there's enough room on the bed for all three plus five more of Roland," she says, blunt, matter-of-fact. She worries then that he'll get the wrong idea, or the right one and rebuke it anyway, but he only nods his consent after a brief moment of deliberation.

"All right," is all he says, and then he waits. Waits with his back turned upon her pointed glare—not a suggestion, but a royal order—as she shimmies into a gauzy, flowing nightgown while her chemise and petticoat pool around her feet. Waits until she's slipped into the sheets and aligned herself with the edge of her bed, staring blankly into the darkness beyond as Roland breathes with the heaviness of a deep sleep behind her. Finally, she feels the mattress dip, shift her sideways under Robin's weight, and her heart is somewhere in her throat for some unknown reason, until she hears a gruff, low murmur of "Good night, Regina," and she responds with a slow, disbelieving smile that she knows he cannot see.

Her pulse periodically skyrockets throughout the night, with every creak of the bed as he moves and every ripple in the air set off by his quiet, steady breathing.

Still, she sleeps better than she has in weeks.

.

.

.

Regina passes from a state of slumber into one of consciousness so smoothly that she thinks she's gone from one dream right into another. It's a good dream; all snug and warm, tickling her ear with a pleasant, scratchy hum that vibrates down to her toes as she stretches them out, encountering cotton instead of silk. Arches her back into his chest as it rumbles, and strong arms wrapped in that same foreign cotton tighten around her waist.

Wait.

Her breathing quickens as reality crashes her senses. Robin's however, remains slow and sonorous from sleep—washes warmth across the nape of her neck, raises miniature bumps of gooseflesh there before his lips absently press them out of her skin.

The sensation sends electricity zapping through her bloodstream. It takes a monumental force of will for her to stay silent and still. Astonishment has all but paralyzed her in place, but the exquisite little shocks transmitting from every part of him that's in close, delicious contact with her are unsettling, make her jittery and desperate to escape.

_How did this happen?_ she's thinking wildly—wondering how the loud hammering of her heart against her chest can be positively deafening to her but do absolutely nothing to disturb him from rest—when she feels a sudden tension take hold of the heat encasing her body. His embrace goes rigid, hot breath across her neck grows shallow. Stubble leaves her skin but the rest of him stays put, almost seems too sluggish to move, until she realizes their fingers are intertwined, their legs all entangled.

She ventures to turn. Instantly regrets it.

He's close now. So close their noses nearly touch.

And his eyes—if oceans could catch fire, she imagines they would look something like his do now.

But how? She'd never gotten that bath in before bed. She's a mess. Face with a day-old layer of skin, makeup-free where it's rubbed off and onto her pillow. Probably doesn't smell all that fantastic; not like the exotic fusion of scents he might've been privy to had she ever let him get this close before. Her hair will probably break a few combs before she tames it back into something manageable.

And yet, nothing has ever made her feel so beautiful as the look he's giving her now.

Words. She should say some, maybe, but what—a _good morning_ feels inadequate, so she settles on his name, saying it once was not enough and she wants to see his face when she says it again, and again, and again—but she never quite gets it out, as his gaze drops down to her lips, like he's thinking about kissing her there, and God is she thinking about kissing him back—

His mouth touches tentatively to hers, heady and warm, easing into a kiss so gentle it's almost excruciating as a dull, longing ache settles deep in her bones. He shifts and moves over her, torso rising with an elbow anchored into the pillow by her head as his lips slant more fully over her mouth, dragging there at a slow, luxurious pace. Half of her still thinks this a dream, so she opens up all of herself into his kiss, welcomes his answering groan, draws out another when her tongue slips in to tangle with his. Hands grapple for his shoulders as he tugs her close at the waist, belly to belly, hip to hip, nose brushing her cheek as he pauses to take in a gasp of air.

But she's impatient for more, fingers digging firmly into his hair to pull him down for another kiss, hungrier now, all breathy pants intermingling with fervent clashes of mouth and tongue. His hand grips her waist, then travels up to coast along her side, palm spreading heat through her shoulder blade, until his fingers come to rest in her hair, angle the back of her head to deepen the kiss that's already sending shivers and chills flaming up and down her spine. A blissful quiver shakes up her insides, sending heat down low into her belly when he nestles a thigh between her legs. But if all she has to live on are the tender caress of his thumb to her jawline, and that captivating look he gives her in between the warmth of his kisses, she thinks that maybe this villain will get her happily ever after, after all.

Until it occurs to her that something is missing.

More like someone.

She shoves Robin off at the chest, mouth leaving his until there's just enough space for her sharp exclamation of "Where's Roland?" to break through the haze of lust and settle down between them.

Robin fish-mouths open and closed as his eyes refocus, desire bleeding out, giving way to sudden concern.

Regina's out of the bed in an instant, drawing on a robe and tugging it tight across her chest as bare feet hit the floor and break into a run—until for the second time in as many days, she finds herself staring at a mop of hair poking out of her bathtub.

"Regina," Roland says plaintively, after he's peered over to identify her as the source of all the sudden commotion, "where did all the water go?"

Her heart is still puttering too frantically for her to speak properly, when she hears Robin let out a sigh behind her, having joined them once more. "My boy," he admonishes lightly, "there is such a thing as taking too many baths. And I do believe it is not your turn. Some of us are more in need of one than others." Regina jerks her head around to glare at him, hands at her hips, but his teasing smile slackens slightly as he's granted full view of her front side. It seems to stun him for a full second after she's scolded him with her eyes and re-secured her robe at the waist.

But her nerves are still sparking at the ends, shot yet over-sensitized all at once, and she can't help but smirk saucily at him before turning away.

"Ohhh," Roland is saying knowledgeably, rubber ducky clutched in hand now that it no longer has a place to swim. He considers what his father has just told him, nodding thoughtfully as he asks next, "Will Regina help you get clean too, Papa?"

Robin's jaw drops indignantly as she suppresses an unexpected burst of laughter, but he's trained another warm gaze on her with his reply, "I'm sure Regina has other ways of occupying her time," then utters low enough for her ears only, "unless perhaps I asked her kindly enough," and it's her turn to blush madly and look elsewhere.

"_No_, Papa," Roland says, sounding scandalized, from inside an otherwise empty bathtub. "Only I'm allowed to call her that, remember?"


End file.
